“Make amends,” she repeats. “For …”

“For the disturbance.”

She looks to Aja. “Disturbance, he says. Dropping a dish is a disturbance, Andromedus. Helping yourself to another man’s wife is a disturbance. Killing my guests and cutting off the arm of an Olympic Knight is not a disturbance. Do you know what it is?”

“Fun, my liege?”

She leans forward. “It is treason.”

“And you know how we treat with treason,” Aja says. “My father taught my sisters and me.” Her father, the Ash Lord. Burner of Rhea. Lorn despises him.

“An apology from you is insufficient,” the Sovereign says.

“Apology?” I ask.

The Sovereign is caught off guard by my tone.

“I said I should like to apologize. But the problem is, I cannot, because it should be you who apologizes to me.”

Silence.

“You little whelp,” Aja says, rising slowly.

The Sovereign stops her, words cutting clear and cold. “I did not apologize to my father when I took his head from his body. I did not apologize to my grandson when his mother’s ship was destroyed by Outriders. I did not apologize when I burned a moon. So why would I apologize to you?”

“Because you broke the law,” I say.

“Perhaps you were not listening. I am the law.”

“No. You’re not.”

“So you are a student of Lorn’s after all. Did he tell you why he abandoned his post? His duty?” She looks at Lysander. “Why he abandoned his grandson?”

I did not know the boy was Lorn’s grandson. My teacher’s retirement makes sudden sense. He always spoke of Society’s fading glory. How men have forgotten themselves mortal.

“Because he saw what you have become, my liege. You are no Empress. This is no empire, despite what you may think. We are the Society. We are bound by laws, by hierarchy. No person stands above the pyramid.” I look to her killers. “Fitchner, Aja, you protect the Society. You ensure peace. You sail to the far reaches of the System to root out weeds of chaos. But above all else, what is the purpose of the twelve Olympic Knights?”

“Go on,” Aja says to Fitchner. “Play into his mummer’s farce. I will not.”

Fitchner drawls out, “To preserve the Compact.”

“To preserve the Compact,” I say. “And the Compact states, ‘A duel, once begun, cannot reach resolution until its terms are properly fulfilled.’ The terms were death. But Cassius is not dead. His arm will not suffice. I honor the iron ancestors and my rights stand inviolable. So give me what is mine. Give my the gorydamn head of Cassius au Bellona. Or reject the legacy of our people.”

“No.”

“Then we have nothing more to discuss. You may find me on Mars.”

I turn on my heel and walk toward the door.

“The lion fades,” the Sovereign calls. “Find a new home. Here.”

I stop in my tracks. These people are so bloodydamn predictable. They all want what they can’t have.

“Why?” I ask without turning.

“Because I can give you resources Augustus cannot. Because Virginia has already seen how true that is. You want to be with her, don’t you?”

“Why would you want a man who so easily trades his allegiance?” I turn and look Fitchner dead in the eye. “Such a man is little more than a common whore.”

“Augustus abandoned you before you abandoned him,” the Sovereign says. “His daughter saw it even if you don’t. I will not abandon you. Ask my Furies. Ask their father. Ask Fitchner. I give a chance to those who stand apart. Join me. Lead my legions and I will make you an Olympic Knight.”

“I am an Aureate.” I spit on the ground. “I am no trophy.”

I stalk away.

“If I can’t have you, no one can.”

Then they come. Three Stained file through the door. Each a foot taller than I. Each garbed in purple and black and carrying pulseAxes and pulseBlades. Their faces hide behind bonelike masks. Eyes of killers grown in the arctic poles of Earth and Mars stare out at me. Glittering black, like oil. I pull my razor and take my battle stance. Their throat-sung war chant rumbles under their masks, like the funeral dirge for a dead god.

“Go on. Sing to your gods.” I twirl my razor. “I’ll send you to meet them.”

“Reaper, please stop,” Lysander calls loudly. I turn to find him walking toward me, hands splayed plaintively. His coat is simple and black. He stands half my height.

His voice floats. Trembles like a delicate bird’s.

“I have watched all your videos, Reaper. Six, maybe seven times. Even the Academy. My tutors believe you are the closest man to the Iron Golds since Lorn au Arcos, the Stoneside.”

That’s when I realize why he looks so nervous. I almost laugh. I’m this little bastard’s boyhood hero.

“We need not see you die tonight. Could you not find a home here as you found with Sevro? With Roque and Tactus, and Pax, the Howlers, and all your great warriors? We have warriors too. Noble ones. You could lead them. But … He steps back. “If you fight, then you die because you make the mistake of believing righteousness puts you beyond my grandmother’s power.”

“It does,” I say.

“Reaper, there is no place beyond her power.”

This is how it happens. They give them heroes. They raise them on lies and violence, and then they let them grow into monsters. What would he be without their guiding hand?

“He wanted to see you,” the Sovereign says. “I told him legend never matches fact. Better not to meet your heroes.”

“And what do you think?” I ask little Lysander.

“It all depends on your next choice,” he says delicately.

“Join us, Darrow,” Fitchner drawls. “This is the place for you now. Augustus is done.”

Smiling inwardly, I relax my blade. Lysander clenches a fist happily. I pace with him back to his grandmother, playing along but not yet proclaiming any allegiance.

“You’re always telling me to bow,” I tell Fitchner as I pass.

He shrugs. “Because I don’t want you to break, boyo.”

“Lysander, fetch me my box,” the Sovereign says. Happily, the boy rushes out of the room as I sit across from his grandmother. “I fear the Institute taught you the wrong lesson—that you can overcome anything if you but try. That is incorrect. In the real world, you must go along. You must cooperate and compromise. You cannot bend the worlds to your morals.”

“Would you have noticed me had I not tried to?”

She smiles softly. “Likely not.”

Lysander returns moments later, carrying a small wooden box. He hands it to his grandmother and waits patiently by her side, eating a tart that Aja hands him. The Sovereign sets the box on the table.

“You value trust. So do I. Let us play a game absent weapons, absent armor. No Praetorians. No lies. No falsity. Just us and our naked truths.”

“Why?”

“If you win, you may request anything of me. If I win, I get the same.”

“If I ask for the head of Cassius?”

“I will saw it off myself. Now open the box.”

I lean forward. Chair creaking. Rain patters on the windows. Lysander smiles. Aja watches my hands. And Fitchner, like me, has no idea what’s in the bloodydamn box.

I open it.

15

TRUTH

It takes everything I am not to flee. What comes hissing from the box is pulled out of nightmare, pulled so perfectly out of the depths of my subconscious that I nearly think the Sovereign knows where I come from. Where I truly come from.

“The game is one of questions,” she says. “Lysander, please do the honors.” She hands her son a knife. The boy cuts the sleeve of my uniform to the elbow, rolling it back to expose my forearm. His hands are gentle. He smiles at me apologetically.

“Don’t be afraid,” he says. “Nothing bad will happen, so long as you don’t lie.”

The carved creatures from the box—two of them—stare at me with three blind eyes apiece. Part scorpion. Part pitviper. Part centipede. They move like liquid glass, organs, skeleton, visible through skin, chitinous mouths chattering and hissing at the same time as one slithers onto the table.